


birds singing in the sycamore tree

by metonymy



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Dreams, Multi, Stream of Consciousness, bed sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-23 01:11:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/920220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonymy/pseuds/metonymy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natural dreaming never really stops entirely, but when you have partners to keep you grounded waking up is never so bad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	birds singing in the sycamore tree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TigerLily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerLily/gifts).



A job had gone south. It happened occasionally, but not often, and it was the first time things had gone poorly for Ariadne since the Fischer job. Which, they all told her, didn't count as a proper job. None of them were especially to blame for it; nobody expected the mark to trip and fall over the edge of the balcony where Eames's forged model was waiting for him, waking himself up before they could even start to find the information.

They'd wound up in a safehouse in east Berlin, an airless closet of a space with blocked-off windows and plumbing that creaked and groaned alarmingly in the walls and almost no heating. Arthur had immediately set to work securing the place, and Eames was about to follow suit, and Ariadne plopped herself down in the middle of the bed and promptly fell asleep. She'd been holding two levels in her head and running mazes and manipulating space, on top of running for her life. And unlike former soldiers, she couldn't just keep going once the adrenaline dropped out.

Ariadne dreamed:

_they are back at the party, and the mark turns to her with a caved-in skull and brain spilling out like mashed turnips, fibrous and wet, and says you shouldn't have come here little girl, and robert fischer is staring at her out of this mark's face and asking her why she broke his mind, why she saved him from limbo but let them rebuild his world in their own image, and she turns and runs into the party and everyone bears faces that she almost recognizes like the lyrics of a song she couldn't quite remember, and the floor sticks to her feet and her shoes are gone, bare feet sticking to the blood washing over the white marble, and beyond the ballroom is the sound of rushing water and the hollow clacking of old bones tumbling in the waves, the waves that pour through the ballroom, a classroom that becomes a party that becomes a funeral mass, and dark eyes on hers and a finger against her lips, and she needs to wake up, she needs to tell him--_

Perhaps she gasped, as she woke up; she started to turn and found her path blocked by a warm, solid body. And one on the other side, too. Someone had taken off her boots.

"Arthur?" she whispered, as Eames made a muffled noise that sounded like a snore. Arthur was sitting up, face cast into ghastly relief by a penlight as he leafed through a book. As he clicked the light off he softened into familiar shadows, turning to her with his characteristic calm. She felt better already, knowing he was keeping watch.

"Go back to sleep, Ariadne," Arthur said quietly, leaning down and brushing the hair out of her face. "We've got you."

His fingers were cool against her skin, his words a puff of breath, and his lips touched hers in a gesture that was barely a kiss.

Ariadne closed her eyes.

* * *

Eames was ill.

He knew this, in a distant way, the same way that one learns as a child that there are people on the opposite side of the earth and they're not walking upside down, that the earth seems flat to them as well. A large truth, impossible to grasp.

Or perhaps he was just having trouble hanging onto it because of his sweaty hands. Sweaty everything, really. They weren't in Barcelona in August again, were they?

"Vancouver," said a voice in the distance. Ah. And it wasn't summer, it was winter. Then why was he so bloody hot? He could hear another voice, higher, the tones plaintive against the other's calmer tones. Viola and clarinet, tunes twining around each other, why couldn't he remember the words to the song? There were meant to be words, he just couldn't quite grasp them, and he was trying to tell them, trying to tell them that he knew there were words, he just couldn't, he couldn't...

He drifted:

_Arthur, tanned and buzzed and still like a loaded gun, ready to go off at the first provocation; a bruise high on his cheek and a laugh he never would have expected, a bare chest and a hotel room and longer hair now, and is this a memory or a dream? Why can't he sort anything out to make sense?_  
 _He wants to lie down, it's too hot, he can't think, not with Arthur seeming to shift and flicker before him, slipping from laughter to frowns and back again, features blurring like a forgery, is this really Arthur? Is Eames looking in a mirror? He hasn't forged Arthur in too long, is he out of practice, is that why it's not working?_  
 _It's not Arthur, he hears from behind him, and there's Ariadne, hair unbound and flowing like a Waterhouse maiden, like a nymph waiting for Hylas, like her namesake? He knows she hates that story, so why is she wearing a bloody toga dress? Is it just because of the heat, is that why the walls are melting, like taffy left in the sun, slumping around them?_  
 _Why does she keep saying his name?_

There was something blessedly cool on his forehead, cold and damp and trickling down over his skin and probably into his ears. It went away and he whimpered, and he didn't even care how much of a child he sounded like.

"Come on, Eames, sit up a little, you need to take this," she said, and then there were strong arms pulling him up and Arthur's broad chest behind him, as Ariadne slipped an aspirin between his lips and helped him sip from a glass of water, the liquid sliding down his throat with tingling cold. With herculean effort, he cracked his eyes open to see her there, perfect lovely face tight with worry. Eames tried to reach up to touch her face but his hand was too heavy, it wouldn't move. Arthur eased him down, resting his palm on Eames's damp hair, steadying him, keeping him down.

"It's okay," Ariadne told him, wiping away a trickle of water or sweat or brain juice from his forehead, leaning in to kiss his brow. She smelled like summer. "Rest. We'll be here when you wake up."

Eames closed his eyes.

* * *

"Come to bed?"

Arthur normally didn't sleep more than a few hours a night, a naturally edgy temperament combining with years of training and a nasty espresso habit to make him constitutionally incapable of getting a full night's sleep. Eames was used to this, of course, long years of acquaintance and Somnacin use making him much the same way and keeping his own highly irregular schedule. But Ariadne still slept like a normal person much of the time, sprawling out for long hours at a stretch, and turning into a clinging vine with anyone sharing her bed so they couldn't get up until she was ready.

But that night she gave Arthur that particular look, the one with a crooked smile and a raised eyebrow, and Eames was already unbuttoning his own shirt, and Arthur might have been able to say no to one of them but never to both, so he let her take his hand and draw him in and pull him down by his tie for a kiss.

And after that, when she and Eames conspired to make him stop thinking entirely for a little while, to give himself over to their clever hands and wicked mouths, it was too easy to let them both keep him there and let himself fall asleep, the headlights of passing cars sliding over the ceiling and blurring into soft darkness.

_He stands atop a ruined city, smoking husks and the faint wail of sirens below. He stands on the roof of a building that should be secure, that should be safe, but no longer is. He knows without turning that it is burning too. He feels the heat of the flames at his back._

_He knows he is dreaming. He reaches for his gun, the Glock always at his side in dreams, and it is gone._

_"Did you really think it was going to be that easy?" says the voice behind him._

_It is Mal when he turns around this time, not the shade of Cobb's guilt and grief but his friend, her eyes sad and understanding._

_But she still carries a knife._

_"There's no easy way out of this, Arthur," she tells him, putting her finger to the point of the knife and twisting it, voice musical and low. He turns to look over the edge of the building again, knowing even as he does that it's not high enough to kick himself out, but looking anyway._

_A hand claws at the edge, broken and bloodied fingers scrabbling for purchase, then another. Nash hauls himself up, reaching for Arthur's shoes in spite of the fractured bone sticking out of his forearm, the wet pulpy mass where the left side of his face should be._

_Arthur is never proud when he runs. But he does, feinting around Mal, pounding on the locked door of the building, dashing to the other side for the fire escape and dropping over the side to the first platform, fingers blistering instantly from the heat. He can't breathe. He needs to get away and get air and stop inhaling this smoke and ash._

_"Arthur?" It's not Mal this time, it's Ariadne, wreathed in flames, anguished as she looks at him from inside a locked window, hands beating at the glass. Eames is beside her, sorrowful and burning, peeling apart like paint flaking off a wall._

_Arthur screams._

"Arthur?"

He nearly screamed again but choked it back, sweat beaded on his forehead and down his back as he sat up, gasping for air.

There were hands on his shoulder, his arm, and he started to shake them off, nearly lashing out before he remembered where he was: in bed. With them. No fire, no flame, no burning hair or peeling skin.

Ariadne sat up and propped her chin on his shoulder and he buried his hands in her hair, resting his forehead against hers and catching his breath. When Eames slid a hand across his back he turned to kiss the other man, fingers still tangled in Ariadne's hair.

"Okay?" Ariadne asked softly, still pressed against his back, making that noise that meant she was trying not to yawn.

"It's all right, love," Eames said, kissing the corner of Arthur's mouth and pushing the hair away from his face. "We're here."

Slowly, carefully, Arthur lowered himself back to the bed, catching his breath. Eames draped an arm over his stomach and Ariadne nestled against his shoulder, the pair of them quiet and calm, their breathing in counterpoint and their weight warm against his naked skin.

Finally, Arthur closed his eyes.

This time he did not dream.


End file.
